£150m wiped off the value of Telegraph titles in holding company's annual accounts

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The company which owns the Telegraph titles has written down their value by £149.9m.

This means that Press Acquisitions Ltd made a loss of £131.3m for 2015.

However, at an operating level it made a profit of £51.9m for the 53 weeks to 3 January versus £54.4m for the 52 weeks audited in 2014.

Turnover in 2015 was £327.5m over 53 weeks versus £323.4m over 52 weeks in 2014.

The document reveals that there was a slight increase in editorial and production staff at the Telegraph titles from 662 in 2014 to 664 in 2015.

This suggests that successive waves of editorial redundancies have been offset by new hires.

Some 55 editorial redundanices were announced in October 2014 and 80 job cuts were revealed in March 2013.

The results document notes that the Telegraph’s business model is challenged by declining print audience and the move from desktop to mobile media consumption.

It says: “To mitigate this risk, the Telegraph has set out a strategy and plan to diversity its business and reduce its reliance on print by developing its digital operations and extending its portfolio of market-leading products and services offered to costomers.”

The company made charitable donations of £3,013,750 in 2015: £13,750 of this went to newspaper charities, £2m went to Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity and £1m to the Defence and National Rehabilitation Centre charity.

The accounts for the Telegraph’s holding company (owned by the billionaire Barclay twins) differ slightly from those for Telegraph Media Group, which were given out in a press release on 3 September.

Telegraph Media Group reported an operating profit of £48.3m for the 52 weeks to 28 December on turnover of £320.1m.